11
Don’t Fight the Feelings
Family Strategies for Going to Each Other (Instead of the Refrigerator) to Handle Stress and Avoid Emotional Eating Traps
I love my family. I love their quirkiness, their humor, their passion, their optimism—I even love that they love food. I can also tell you that over the years I have noticed that, as with all families, our lives do seem to revolve around food, at least when it comes to special occasions. And because my family is Jewish, food features prominently at holiday time (not to mention birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, weddings, showers, and fundraisers, to name a few).
Food celebrates life and to deny that would be really disingenuous.
But my family knows that if I’m invited, I’ll be the one bearing a salad, fruit salad, and healthy main dish. Sure, I could make it a battlefield, a constant clashing of wills, an ongoing sermon, or just a real downer of an experience in order to make a “health point.” Instead, I choose to celebrate the joyous occasions with my family—on my terms—without encroaching on their choices.
While I was growing up, my dad seemed to have a natural tendency toward slimness, coupled with the ability to cut back on eating if his weight shifted a bit. Mom, on the other hand, was a whole different story. She had been raised in a very rigid family where food was celebrated but controlled; my grandmother was extremely specific about how much and when to eat and she had managed to battle and successfully control her weight, so she wanted her daughter to do the same. I think my mother figured out young that turning to food for solace would particularly antagonize my grandmother, so she ate on the sly and grew, battling my grandmother’s increasing attempts at control with more eating on the sly. I know my mother also probably had clinical depression; as she entered her adult life, she continued to self-medicate with food.
So I learned from a very young age that food was reward and punishment, the answer to emotional highs and lows, the devil among us. It could help me deal instantaneously with any emotion, but afterward I always felt guilty. I wondered: How did I lose control like that? Why am I turning to food to feel better? Why is this pattern now so entrenched in me? How do I dig out?
I looked at my friends at school and sometimes their behavior seemed alien to me: they could be sad over a grade without grabbing a bag of chips or be truly happy without the reward of cookies or a cupcake. I, on the other hand, handled my emotions with food, as I’d learned from my mother.
Here are the top ten emotional reasons people turn to food for comfort, as my clients have shared them with me over the years:
1. Anxiety
2. Fear
3. Anger
4. Frustration
5. Sadness
6. Insecurity
7. Rivalry
8. Boredom
9. Stress
10. Other emotion (you fill in the blank!)
The point is that we can use food as a way to handle ANY emotion, and we often do. Through my own personal experience, and through working with hundreds of families, it’s easy to underestimate the importance of feelings in the weight loss equation. For some people, emotional eating is a severe problem that may require the help of therapy or ongoing support groups. The reality, however, is that most people have a tendency to turn to food for emotional reasons, including stress, now and again—and feelings can easily create problems for anyone’s efforts to change their lifestyle. Emotional eating is a significant cause of weight gain, even in children and teens.
At the end of the day, this is the part of every food or lifestyle plan to which people simply don’t pay enough attention. Even the most successful dieters can easily fall off the wagon of healthy behaviors if they haven’t worked on the emotional issues that can spur an eating orgy. If you can’t cope with daily highs and lows and/or if you are carrying around emotional baggage that is bubbling just below the surface, you are at risk for emotional eating. You won’t be truly successful at changing your lifestyle or your weight over the long term unless you face up to any level of emotional eating, and work on new strategies to replace those behaviors.
It’s tough to face painful emotional behaviors or past memories that instigate emotional eating or even just habits that have become so entrenched they seem normal and familiar. You will need to tackle these emotional eating issues for yourself and encourage family members to consider their issues as well.
I can offer you the hopeful message that if you tackle this part of your eating dynamics and add it to the HFL program, you will truly be a healthy family for life.
Are You an Emotional Eater?
Here are some questions to help you investigate whether or not you turn to food in emotional situations and how deeply these habits are entrenched. Though some of these behaviors can be caused by other issues or problems, they are often indicators of in the moment or delayed response emotional eating:
• Do you keep a significantly larger supply of food on hand at home or at work than you or your family need? Why?
• Do you keep large stores of carbohydrate foods in your pantry and fridge?
• Do you find yourself grabbing food whenever you feel mood swings, highs and lows?
• Do you keep food stashed in drawers, your purse, your car?
• Do you eat significant amounts of food after dinner? Why?
• Do you wake up at night to eat? Why?
• Do you reward yourself with food?
• Do you console yourself with food?
• Did you grow up in a household where behavior and emotions were handled with food?
• Do you feel out of control during any eating experiences?
• Do you grab food and eat when no one will know?
• Do you justify larger or additional eating experiences because of your exercise efforts that may indeed burn some calories but not enough to justify eating “extra food”?
• When you become emotional, do your thoughts veer to food quickly?
• Do you eat in secret?
In the questions that end with “Why?” I’m asking you to be honest with yourself, to find out if the motivation to eat is indeed emotional in nature. Were you steaming over something that happened earlier that day or even the day before? Was it a celebration that just kept on giving and giving—food, that is? Is your immediate gut reaction to turn to food as a bandage or coping mechanism or reward?
Finally, there is a very important two-part question that is the unmistakable identifier of emotional eating: (1) If you shared how you eat with others, would you feel embarrassed? and (2) Do you want your kids to eat like this?
If your answer to (1) is yes and (2) is no, we both know there is emotional and—to some degree, destructive—eating going on.
Sometimes the light bulb of recognition going off is enough to cause a change in behavior. For others, therapy may be necessary,
especially if these behaviors are having an impact on the quality of life and health. Most people fall somewhere in between and need to identify the emotional eating problem, isolate specific habits that need to be changed, and devise new behaviors to replace the old ones. In this effort, patience is a virtue. You may need to develop a variety of emotional strategies and responses to help you replace your old emotional eating habits. Again, the support of a buddy, family and friends, support groups or counseling professionals can help you overcome emotional eating for good.
In order to make progress with emotional eating, you need to ask yourself another question: when you eat with emotion as your impetus, do you really feel the pain? When I say “pain,” I mean the insidious weight gain, the slightly shifting blood pressure profile, the increased risk of diabetes? Because you need to use that reality as a source of motivation to break the emotional food bond. Something needs to be at stake for you to seize the moment and want change. You need to have clarity about what this habitual emotional eating is doing to you.
MAKE SURE IT’S EMOTIONAL, NOT MEDICATION
Certain medications can make you more prone to gain weight. It’s important not to confuse emotional eating with physiological responses to medications that can make you less active or hungrier or otherwise impact your calorie in/calorie out balance. Talk to your doctor if you believe a medication might be causing hunger or weight gain. Here are the more likely culprits:
• Antihistamines and sleep aids, which can sap your energy, so you move less.
• Antidepressants, which can make you eat more by affecting the neurotransmitters in your brain that modulate appetite and mood.
• Birth control pills, which can make you retain water.
• Migraine medication, which can make you hungrier thanks to its active ingredient.
• Steroids, which are notorious for making you moody and hungry.
The Stress Connection Is Real
One reason that emotional eating is such a universal problem is that stress is naturally associated with eating behaviors. Research indicates that stress can cause increased levels of cortisol; experts believe that higher levels of circulating cortisol may actually enhance fat storage. There may be other effects of increased levels of cortisol:
• Lower metabolic rate and increased levels of gastric acid, which maximizes the calories you get from your food.
• Retention of additional sodium, causing a bloated feeling.
• Release of high-energy fats and blood-clotting agents into your bloodstream.
• Energy being diverted from your immune system.
• Possible increase in cholesterol (research still ongoing).
People under stress may also experience feelings of depression, anxiety, frustration, and fatigue, leading to lower self-esteem and self-confidence, which then leads to eating. There are also indications stress can change the shape of your body. It may partly explain why some people develop an “apple” shape, storing fat centrally in their body. Not to mention that stress can simply increase your appetite.
Researchers have postulated that there may be a bi-directional connection specifically between stress and food.1 You crave food emotionally, especially carbohydrates and high-fat foods, because these foods actually calm you down. The hormones that stress releases may instigate a physiological desire to treat the “fight or flight” response with calories so your body has an immediately available
energy source. Carbohydrates in particular offer that kind of easily utilized energy.
On the flip side, overeating can in and of itself create a feeling of being out of control, and so the cycle continues, with you turning to food because the overeating is actually stressing you out.2 There is no “fight or flight” response in this case: you are actually immobilized. Because you’re not using those immediately available energy stores, your body is tucking them away as additional fat stores. You gain weight—you eat out of misery—the cycle continues.
It’s also been theorized that some foods have a calming quality that, in some cases, may be downright addictive. Let’s take a food like chocolate, which research indicates may actually cause your body to release small amounts of mood-altering or satisfaction-boosting opinates.3 Sensing this “reward” may very well lead you to gravitate to chocolate repeatedly, seeking to re-experience that instant positive feeling over and over again, especially if you experience a mood alteration. So every time you feel “down” or stressed or anxious—you crave chocolate. Carbohydrates in general may confer a peaceful feeling when you eat them in an agitated state because they calm the “fight or flight” instinct. Put more simply, let’s just say that the pleasure of eating seems to help ward off or calm negative emotions.
ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT TIPS (EMOTIONAL APPETITE IS ALSO OKAY)
• Remind yourself that emotional eating is not normal unless it is occasional and controlled (we all can have an emotional food moment).
• Explore how the cycle of emotional eating began. Identify mitigating events and childhood situations and behaviors. Get in the habit of talking about your feelings out loud.
• Recognize the difference between mild, moderate, and serious emotional eating.
• Seek out behaviors in others that mirror how you would like to behave during emotional highs and lows.
• Make a list of any health issues you have that derive from stress and stress-eating and post it where you can see it on a regular basis.
• Journal to get a true picture of your eating in relation to your emotional moods.
BEWARE OF BLOWN DIET SYNDROME
Back in the late 1970s, Janet Polivy and C. Peter Herman, PhD, researched and coined the term “blown diet syndrome.” They looked at restrained eaters, chronic dieters who carefully monitored their intake because of fluctuating weight issues. Then they compared them to unrestrained eaters, people who ate unthinkingly (no real food issues—regular eaters). When the restrained eaters were given milkshakes in various portion sizes, they then pigged out on ice cream, as if it was an uncontrolled extension of the milkshake, regardless of how large or small the milkshake was. It was as if the milkshake experience unleashed the cravings demon within them. If they had no milkshakes, they were able to remain restrained. The unrestrained eaters drank the milkshakes and behaved proportionately to the portion size. If one milkshake left them some comfortable eating room, they had some ice cream. If, however, they were given two milkshakes, that was it—no ice cream and no feeling of deprivation. So it seems like if they were chronic dieters and went off the “diet track,” their next step was to say, “What the heck” and go overboard and indulge. That’s the origin of the phrase “blown diet syndrome.”
I believe there is something in between called healthy restraint: saying no to a second cookie, having a dessert one night, and saying no the next two nights. Exercising healthy restraint means you stop when you’re full—and that’s a healthy habit. It does not necessarily mean vigilantly counting every single calorie you eat with utter dedication. Obsessively counting every morsel can be debilitating if you don’t eventually shift to a healthier way of tuning into the feeling of satiation. It’s important to truly embrace how it feels to be full so you can use it as a healthful gauge and then choose portion sizes that satisfy you.
However, it’s important to realize that this soothing effect is temporary. In the long run, the negative emotions caused by the consequences of ongoing emotional eating are likely to trigger as many or more negative emotions as the emotional eating is temporarily warding off—it’s a vicious cycle.
Food can also be a distraction. If you’re worried about an upcoming event or rethinking an earlier conflict, eating comfort foods may distract you. But the distraction is only temporary. While you’re eating, your thoughts focus on the pleasant taste of your comfort food. Unfortunately, when you’re done overeating, your attention returns to your worries, and you may now bear the additional burden of guilt about overeating.
Brenda Crawford-Clark, MPH, MS, author of Body Sense: Balancing Your Weight and Emotions, urges, “Consider what trauma and loss has occurred, because often that’s where food issues begin. Things that most people don’t even consider can be the anchor that keeps someone from keeping weight off or getting past a stuck point once they’ve started to lose.” She suggests that the following situations could be the first triggers of a pattern of emotional eating that entrenches itself:4
• Miscarriage
• Illnesses or accidents
• A death
• Divorce
• Infertility
• Financial strain
• Feeling like you have to be perfect
• Childhood bullying
• Childhood sexual assault
• Childhood abuse
• Being labeled as different (such as a kid who has ADHD or a learning disability)
• Adoption
She also echoes something I was subjected to in my childhood: a household in which there was an awful lot of yelling and constant criticism. I call it the “den of negativity.” I remember one event as clearly today as I did almost thirty-five years ago. My family moved when I was in the sixth grade and I was placed in a new school. I knew that my academic record, of which I was incredibly proud, would probably not get me the middle school valedictorian or salutatorian honor I really coveted. Transfer kids were always at a disadvantage because a record from another school could never be assessed and compared to the new school’s standards.
I continued to toil, though, because throwing myself into school was another way to escape my difficult home life. The day of academic award announcements came two years later, in eighth grade. To my utter shock, I was recognized and shared the honor of valedictorian with a friend. I ran to a pay phone around the corner from my school and called home.
When I breathlessly announced my award to my mom, she said, “There must be some mistake. Are you sure? Why would they give it to you?” My response was to assure her tearfully there was no mistake, and then to walk quickly to the local deli, where I stuffed my face with fresh pastries. My best friend, food, was always there to console me. Later on, I felt miserable, overstuffed, unloved, and emotionally spent. I can still remember the pain.
Four Strategies for Emotional Eating
There will always be situations that provoke emotional responses. How you deal with those situations depends primarily on four strategies:
1. Retraining
2. Mindfulness
3. Prepared responses
4. Asking for support
1. Retraining
The first step is to retrain yourself and replace eating in response to emotion with other behaviors. That can involve some serious work. Despite the length of time you’ve been conditioned to respond to any swing in emotion with food, you must now replace that behavior. Some people can do this with ease once they understand why they have been using this habitual response. For others, it’s an ongoing struggle. I assess my clients to decide if they need to work with a therapist, even for a short period of time, to talk it out, heal old emotional wounds, and work on healthier behaviors.
Many people will fall somewhere in between: they are sometimes able to listen to their healthier inner voice saying, “Don’t do that” and at other times, the emotional pendulum swings too far too fast and they turn to food. If you can acknowledge this behavior and continue to work on replacing immediate food response with other patterns of habitual behavior like knitting, drawing, journaling, chewing gum, or going outdoors, you will undo a huge source of pain and weight gain. You will also begin to gain a sense of being in charge and choosing to avert these emotional feelings with a choice other than food.
STRESS AND METABOLIC SYNDROME
Ongoing stress and emotional eating can be a serious precursor to metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors that I’ve mentioned before, and which is being diagnosed in escalating numbers among both children and adults.5
People (and children) with metabolic syndrome are at increased risk of coronary heart disease and other diseases related to plaque buildup in artery walls (e.g., stroke and peripheral vascular disease) and type 2 diabetes. The metabolic syndrome has become increasingly common in the United States. It’s estimated that more than 50 million Americans have it.6
To begin with, the four P’s of the HFL plan will help you to select and control your food choices. However, you still need to face your emotional “food demons,” so to speak.
Here are some quick tips for retraining:
• Journal to learn if there is a pattern to your emotions. Maybe Monday and Thursday are particularly stressful days because you do mommy duty or have work stress, or perhaps weekends are especially stressful because you’re trying to squeeze in so many errands and responsibilities.
• Know your triggers or trigger situations so you can anticipate them and have a non-food solution ready.
• Do get a professional assessment if you think that therapy may help.
• Make it easy for your family and yourself by sticking to the planning and preparation parts of the HFL program. Too many unplanned meals and snacks or keeping unhealthy food on hand just encourages emotional eating.
• Pre-plan the replacement behaviors: everything from having gum on hand to removing yourself from the situation to calling a buddy for support.
• Try out a bunch of new habits and then choose one or two that you turn to consistently, which can become your new “emotional treatment habit.”
• Seek comfort elsewhere.
• Don’t get down on yourself; it takes time to replace ingrained behaviors.
2. Mindfulness
Being mindful about what and how you eat is a huge step toward changing your food behaviors and responses. Studies at Brigham Young University have shown that intuitive eaters are less likely to
overeat because they listen to their internal hunger cues and are less likely to be swayed into eating by external cues, like emotional and environmental stresses.
Mindful eating takes that concept a step further by causing you to assess what you really like and don’t like. How often do you find yourself in an emotional moment eating things you don’t even like, just to assuage those awful and overwhelming feelings? Being mindful means learning to savor food, eating slowly, and reducing distractions during meals (like TV). And being mindful may help reduce food anxieties, such as when you are so anxious about certain foods causing you to binge that you cut them out of your diet entirely. At some point, that rigid behavior, which only works for a small part of the population over the long term, will be challenged and you will succumb, possibly continuing the binge for several days.
Mindful eating techniques include slowing the pace of eating, being aware of each bite, and talking and drinking water at meals to slow down the whole tempo of the experience. For some people, practices such as mindful exercise (yoga, tai chi, qigong) or meditation can be helpful in creating a more mindful lifestyle in general, as well as in creating more mindful eating habits.
Again, being mindful should make you aware of foods you struggle with, because many of us know that we have little control of eating limits with certain foods like bread, chocolate, ice cream, or french fries. As I mentioned, they may either have a calming association from childhood or they may actually have a chemical impact on your brain chemistry. Ultimately, you need to work on the habitual relationship that food represents in order to gain a healthier emotional relationship with that food.
As a child, I hoarded chocolate and turned to it for comfort; today, it’s still a challenge. I now enjoy it under controlled circumstances, as a shared dessert, always outside the home, while keeping track of portion size. I have also found “better choices” that allow me to savor the taste of chocolate without a lot of calories: low-fat chocolate pudding, Skinny Cow® ice cream sandwiches, Fudgesicle® treats, diet chocolate soda, fat-free frozen vanilla yogurt with a little chocolate sauce, diet hot chocolate.
Those foods allow me to manage my craving mindfully so I can truly appreciate a decadent treat less frequently. This kind of mindful eating keeps me from experiencing overwhelming cravings, and it also allows me to control the tendency to turn to high-fat chocolate treats to deal with emotional swings. If I really can’t manage certain feelings, at least I’m eating foods that are less caloric!
3. Prepared Responses
One of the lessons that I work with during an HFL transformation is the idea of having a repertoire of responses already prepared or available to be put in place. The art of preparing responses to eating urges is a very personalized experience. Over the years, I have had some clients who, even with therapy, have turned to rather unconventional ways to deal with their emotional eating issues. One woman actually has her husband lock the pantry and puts an alarm on the fridge because she simply can’t cope with end-of-day stress without turning to food. Now you may think that’s insane, but she will tell you that that this simple technique has allowed her to lose eighty pounds and finally keep it off after more than two decades of cyclical dieting. How can you argue with that?
DON’T BUY INTO THE HEALTHY HALO
That phrase was coined by Brian Wansink, director of Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab. When you eat for emotional reasons, you very often underestimate the amount of food or calorie count of food in your daily diet. Sometimes this is due to a belief that the food choice is “healthy” (for example, Subway’s ® sandwiches or McDonald’s® salads). The term “healthy halo” refers to the idea that we often overeat because we think the food we’re eating is healthy. A calorie is a calorie. Overeating will cause weight gain, even when the choice is so-called “healthy” food.
You will need to find the prepared responses that work best for you, but here are some examples of behaviors that can distract you from emotional eating:
• Deep breathing
• Chewing gum
• Exercising
• Physically leaving the situation
• Calling a buddy
• Writing a blog entry or going online to an established message board
• Knitting
• Listening to music
• Playing an instrument
• Cleaning (sounds crazy, but it does work for some people)
• Taking a long shower or bath
• Physically closing the kitchen door (or pantry door) so that you see a physical barrier
• Making your menu plans for the next day so you are actively engaged with a task from the HFL program
4. Asking for Help
For some people, the final step is incredibly hard: asking others for help. It is really hard to state, out loud, that you need someone to intervene if they hear you going down to the pantry at night; it may be really difficult to admit to hoarding food or using food as a crutch to handle overwhelming emotions; it may be extremely intimidating to share with someone the fact that although you appear to be coping, you are actually unhappy and struggling with your eating. And this goes for each family member, even children. If your family is participating in the HFL program, then your family will naturally be discussing food issues, and everyone should feel encouraged to ask for help and support. Just remember that even moms and dads sometimes need to ask for comfort, a listening ear, or someone to take over when they are being challenged by emotions or cravings on a given day.
You May Need an Appetite Adjustment
One of the things you can do to help control emotional eating is to make an “appetite adjustment.” Your eating should be driven by appetite or genuine hunger, which normally ebbs and flows naturally during the day. Most of us do need to eat every three to four hours in order to feel energetic and to respond to blood sugar lows or hunger. But emotions can get in the way, fueling an additional eating session or a larger than necessary meal or snack. Here are some ways you can counteract cravings or an emotional food response:
• Examine the volume of your meal. Eat those bulky fruits, veggies, and whole grains so you feel fuller.
• Consider the satiety factor. Remember to include protein at every meal because it does seem to increase satiation.
• Don’t underestimate palatability. Just don’t equate high doses of sugar and fat with the only way to feel palate pleasure. Fruits and vegetables in season are incredible palate pleasures and have an inherent sweetness. Chicken and fish seasoned with fresh herbs can be delicious. Using small amounts of healthier oils can enhance the flavors of foods.
• Watch portion sizes and visual cues. These retraining methods go hand in hand with mindful eating and can help you to understand when you are full.
• Distractions are a no-no when you’re eating. Studies show you will eat more when distracted by TV, music, nonstop chatter, or the presence of alcohol.
• Be aware of the impact of variety. Though I’m all for different tastes and textures at a meal, lots of variety can stimulate false appetite. This is a perfect explanation for still having “room” for dessert, even when you are really full from the meal itself.
How do you prevent situations that provoke emotional eating? Can it really be done on a consistent basis? After all, humans are emotional creatures.
We all deal with emotions differently and perceive stresses differently. Nothing seems to ruffle the feathers of one of my friends. She
just seems to glide through life, coping with upsetting situations calmly. In her presence, I feel just a little more grounded, just a bit more able to cope in a rational fashion with even truly challenging situations. She’s my “go to” person when I need an opinion. She says she loves my heightened emotions, my zest for life, my passion, my energy. That’s why she’s attracted to me. I would love to have just a bit more of my friend in me—especially when I feel an overwhelming emotion that threatens to send me right into the embrace of my favorite food. When I’m with her, self-control is a lot easier. When I’m not, I have to follow a somewhat different action plan. I have learned that responding in a more modulated fashion to highly emotional situations is helpful. I also know that simply learning to relax as soon as I feel the upsweep of emotion can be one of the most valuable behaviors to master.
For many people, it is often a question of accepting reality—that although the moment may seem incredibly important at the time, something that food might help you get through, in the end, life will go on without any dramatic impact and eating won’t do anything about it, anyway. So I work with clients to imagine situations and we literally role-play ways to avoid them, defuse them, or diminish their impact.
Here are some techniques you can use to avoid the emotional shifts that may induce you to treat yourself inappropriately with food:
• Ask yourself if the impact of the situation is irrevocable. If the answer is no, then troubleshoot a solution calmly.
• Ask yourself if your anger will solve the situation. If not, find a way to convey your feelings to the person and reward yourself for being in control.
• Ask yourself if a do-over is possible and if so, do it over!
• Ask yourself if a little bit of quiet time will give you a clearer perspective.
• Ask yourself if this emotional extreme will benefit the situation. If not, grab a pad and paper and jot down other ways to cope.
• Ask yourself how you’ll feel after the emotional onslaught leads to an unnecessary eating experience.
Creating Healthy Behavior Patterns That Last
Anyone can say they are ready to lose weight, ready to get healthy, ready for change. It takes genuine honesty and courage to say “I am willing to face my emotional demons.” The HFL 4 Ps can help to create healthy habits and the Yes, No, Maybe So food plan can help you to understand how to eat and get active, but as an experienced lifestyle coach, I can tell you that to achieve long-lasting healthy behavior patterns, you have to conquer the emotional part of the equation too.
MORE STRATEGIES FOR STOPPING EMOTIONAL EATING
• Be willing to get honest with yourself and tackle the emotional component of your eating.
• Seek therapy if these are lifelong, entrenched behaviors.
• Keep a diary and take note of when you are more likely to have an “emotional food fest,” what foods you turn to, how often it happens.
• Also note in a diary the replacement behaviors you plan to use and monitor which ones work and which ones don’t.
• Stop hiding or hoarding food and be willing to exhibit emotional eating in public. Just eliminating the secrecy may help you cut down on emotional eating habits.
• Remind yourself of the physical complications that come from emotional eating.
• Turn to soft music, meditation, yoga, or deep breathing to calm yourself in the moment.
• Have an emergency buddy to whom you can turn.
Tips for Kids/Teens
When dealing with kids or teens who may be turning to food to handle emotions, you need to be aware of when they are getting agitated, in a good or bad way, and talk to them. Ask them to tell you how they’re feeling, and why turning to food seems to be the answer. They’re not as sophisticated as you are, and they may initially be resistant to your efforts to intervene. Make the conversation nonconfrontational. Be real and let them know that turning to food instead of dealing with emotions in a more direct and effective way can cause problems. Don’t forget to be honest about your own experiences, and share your own struggles with them. Mostly, be patient, be available, be nonjudgmental, and share your own experiences.
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